Category

Published on

17 Jun 2013

Abstract

In the last decade, Real-time Hybrid Simulation (RTHS) has become a well-recognized testing strategy as an alternative to other known testing methodologies such as shake table testing. Essentially, RTHS provides researchers the opportunity to isolate and physically investigate the more complicated or critical components while well-studied structural elements can be modeled numerically. Although RTHS is advantageous in reducing monetary cost and time that could be spend to build the full-scale structural system, calculating system responses in real-time requires a lot of computational power. Specifically, response computation for systems with larger degrees-of-freedom can only be achieved if the computational model is distributed along two or more real-time systems. To meet the aforementioned challenge and reveal the feasibility of distributed RTHS (dRTHS), a simulation tool has been proposed, focusing on comparison of (i) pure analytical simulations and (ii) dRTHS of a four story small-scale prototype structure under various earthquake inputs. Integrity of numerical models, performance of the proposed simulation tool are evaluated through comparisons. The results indicate that dRTHS concept can be considered as a reliable and efficient testing method.